A popular type of merchandise display for greetings cards consists of staggered, offset rows of shelves and walls which support and display stacks of the greeting cards in a cascading, tiered fashion. In such a merchandise display, display spaces are disposed on both sides of each of the walls, and stacks of greeting cards are supported and displayed from the display spaces.
The display of stacks of merchandise in a cascading, tiered fasion enables consumers to remove individual articles from the stacks and to inspect the articles prior to purchasing them. Thus, it is desirable to try and maintain the stacks in a neat, orderly fashion in the display. It is also desirable to encourage consumers to return articles properly into the stacks in the event they do not purchase the articles. For both such purposes, it has been found useful to provide divider structures for dividing the display spaces on both sides of the walls into segments, each segment being of a predetermined size to accomodate a stack of the articles.
One type of divider that has been used with such types of merchandise displays is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,612,292 which is owned by the assignee of this invention. The divider comprises an attachment member for resiliently engaging the upper end of of a display wall, and a divider tongue extending from the attachment member into the display space behind the wall to separate the display space behind the wall into segments.
Another type of divider for a merchandise display is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,002,632. The divider includes a relatively flat base plate, a clip for securing the base plate to a display wall and a divider tongue extending from the base plate into a display space on one side of the display wall. The base plate, in addition to forming part of the divider structure, carries a rolled edge which enables the base plate to support a reorder tag for the merchandise. Thus, when a stack of cards in the merchandise display is exhausted, the reorder tag serves as a reminder to a merchant to replenish the cards of that stack. It is useful to positively support the reorder tags on the divider so that the reorder tags are not loosely placed behind the stacks of cards.
In a cascading, tiered merchandise display for articles such as greeting cards, there is often a problem in dividing the two display spaces at the top end of the display. Specifically, the back wall of the display usually extends well above the topmost display space; hence, it cannot properly support a divider of the type shown in either of U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,612,292 or 3,002,632. Thus, the top-most display wall must serve as the support for dividers extending to both sides of that display wall. With dividers of the type shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,612,292 or 3,002,632, it is not possible to selectively locate dividers in any desired locations on opposite sides of the top display wall.